Settling In

I've started out with a bit of philosophizing here.  There are pictures (and fewer words) below...  :-)

Wherever you go, there you are.  It's an old adage, but the more I travel the more truth I see in it. People everywhere eat and sleep, love each other and have difficulties and traumas, work and play and struggle with things. Wherever you go, people are people and it is the person looking at them who determines what is seen.

Grace added here that she thinks it is interesting to see how our individual worlds tend to be quite small. We center our world on our own experience, struggles, challenges, needs and desires. Even though they are similar in theme, these experiences, struggle and challenges are also individual and separate. It is an interesting paradox that our similarities are also the walls of our differences.

I think it can be useful to think of the world as a mirror, reflecting back to us what we think of ourselves. The mirror is always somewhat distorted of course. When we move to a new place we have a chance to look through a different mirror, with different distortions. These differences can point out where our assumptions about the world are perhaps not correct, or as universal as we may believe.

Some of the differences seem small, but point to larger expectations. It is difficult here, for instance, to find peanut butter in a jar large enough to make more than about three peanut butter sandwiches. I've also had twitches of frustration over spice packages apparently intended for Liliputian households. I expect there to be more...

Having to look for baking soda in a pharmacy rather than a grocery store is another small assumption breaker that has recently come to my attention. Baking Soda? In a pharmacy? I would never have thought to question baking soda's rightful (and possibly righteous) placement on the shelves of a grocery store. How many things do we think are in their rightful place, when it is really just an arbitrary habit of culture?

On a topic of slightly more import, there are also assumptions about what can be expected in life. In Canada holidays that include flights to far away places are pretty common. So is the idea of being able to retire at some point and live on savings and a pension. These things are definitely not taken for granted here and are much less widely available.

I had an opportunity today to see a demonstration of dancing and music by a group of Mapuche people (Mapuche is the name of the First Nations group in the South of Chile). A story told by one of the speakers (and translated for me by Grace) told of meeting a Mapuche man from the far south of Chile. This Mapuche man owned ten hectares of land, but only farmed one of the hectares. When asked why he didn't make use of the other nine hectares he replied "because I already have enough".  This is another contrast - both with the European descendants living in Chile and with European and Asian descendants in all of the Americas. We tend to look for how we can get more from whatever we have, rather than being happy with what is "enough".  We want bigger peanut butter jars and spice packages...

Here is a little taste of the performance. The trumpet-like sound is coming from an interesting instrument made from a curled tube (I'm not sure of what material), and a cow's horn as the flared trumpet end. You can just see part of the tube, wrapped in red, white and blue yarn, being played by the man standing in the front left of the picture. It looks difficult to play.

On to what has been happening in the past few weeks...

After, I'm told, one of the wettest Augusts on record, spring is coming to Concepcion. I've been saying that spring is coming pretty much ever since I got here, but now it's really coming.  :-)

Actually, winter here doesn't seem very different from spring in Vanderhoof, so I'm not very good at judging the differences in the seasons yet. However, flowers are springing up all over the place now, tree blossoms are in full bloom and the weather seems to be tending toward warmer and sunnier. I'll take those as signs of spring.

The last few weeks have mainly contained settling in activities. I can't say that I have a regular routine, but things have fallen into a bit more of a pattern. I alternate daily, and sometimes multiple times within the day between thinking that I'm never going to be able to speak Spanish, and thinking that perhaps there is some hope. I have also been trying to convince my memory that forgetting words directly after learning them is highly counter productive and holding onto them would be a better idea. So far my memory continues to be reluctant to agree on this point, but we are in ongoing negotiations.

Some other activities:

Cooking
I've found that I don't mind cooking - even enjoy it sometimes - when I have time to do it.

Along with the ordinary things, I have experimented with making Kimchi. I thought it turned out quite well, but it didn't turn out to be one of Grace's favorites. I didn't have any Korean red pepper, but the Merken - hot ground chili - from Chile seems to work quite well.

I've also been experimenting with bread making using the slow rise technique. Apparently, letting the yeast work for a longer time improves both the texture of the bread and the nutrition and breaks down the gluten better. I've been making whole grain loaves. They are quite firm and a bit heavy, but they are quite tasty. This loaf contains big chunks of garlic and is really nice dipped in a bit of oil and chili mixed together, and it went well with the thick curried squash soup.

This is also artichoke season, so I've been learning about eating and enjoying artichokes. I had never eaten one, except the kind you find in a jar looking kind of yellow and shriveled. I was also surprised to discover that artichokes are basically really big thistles and the part we eat is the blossom. Who knew?

There seems to be quite a lot of really good wine in Chile, and it has been accompanying dinners fairly often...

Before one can cook food, one has to find the food. Exploring the various open markets - ferias - in the area has been kind of fun. So far we have visited two regular ones and yesterday we went to a big exposition type of affair that featured booths from artisans and food producers from all over the region.

These pictures are from the Vega Monumental, a large market that is open every day:

 Lots of people

 and flowers

 and seaweed.  This is called cochayuyo. Grace says this is good and we now have some to try. I'm skeptical... especially because the recipe for soup she recently showed me started with the writer saying that her usual family response to seeing this on the table is "No!". I think I may agree, but I'm game to give it a try anyway. Grace says I'm going to love it, and if not I have to lie.

I thought I had taken some better pictures of the produce that is available. It's pretty impressive, though I don't seem to have the pictures. Lots of vegetables and fruit of all kinds in great mounds stretching off into the distance.

We went on a drive to Bulnes, a nearby town, for Grace's work. This was one of the many very wet days.

This is a kind of fun little restaurant and shop near Bulnes, called Te Cuida,  where we stopped for a moment and got some honey

 I was impressed with the ovens

And there was the opera (Lucia of Lammermore). It was really well done actually, I thought at least. It is very impressive the way that a single singer can fill an entire theater with his or her voice, over the sound of the orchestra.

Of course, it is all about the drama and the lovers died in the end. This is Lucia, directly after she killed her newly wedded (and unwanted) husband and just before she killed herself.

This is Edgardo, (Sergio Jarlaz) lamenting, shortly before he kills himself.

and, finally, we've been on some nice hikes. Here are a few pictures from our trip to Laraquete, a small town beside el Rio Las Cruces. It is a beautiful little river - creek really, that winds down out of the mountains and is famous for stones that are formed so that when looked at in cross section (so to speak) :-) a cross is visible.

This is the only place in the world, apparently, where this sort of crystal formation can be found.

Some pictures from the hike:

Like so many places in Chile, very small homes

A small but quite cute church

Bread for sale

Hauling firewood

Some parts of the trail seem quite jungle like, but only in the steep parts of the river canyon. Most of the land has been forested, and reforested, with planted pines and eucalyptus for the forest industry.

Grace of the jungle

and Todd of the trail  :-)  We made walking sticks from some sticks we found cut along the trail.

The red flower is Quintral and it has medicinal properties. The Mapuche people use it to improve memory and to help with headaches. It also has, apparently, anticarcinogenic properties and is a good antioxidant, among other things.

Navigating the steep and slippery trail to the waterfall

At the falls

A rather eroded mountain bike trail

We loved this white-blossomed tree

 Sunshine by the river

This seems a good place to end. Next installment after Peru...

Moving to Chile - the first 10 days

As I write this, the sun is rising across the city of Concepcion, Chile. I've come to this part of the world from my home in Canada (see my tiny house blog) because of my wonderful wife Grace. We are here working and exploring while making our new lives together.

Outside, wraiths of mist were sliding along the Biobio river earlier, occasionally making forays out across the wide band of treed floodplain and sliding into the city streets, then retreating again to the river. In the west, a bank of fog still hangs over the ocean. From where I sit, I can look out across the little lake (known as Laguna Grande), across the tan grass of the winter wetlands, the row of leafless trees backed by a further row of evergreens, across the jumbled band of housing of the Lomus Colorado district, and out to the ocean, stretching into the horizon behind it's thin veil.

People seem to have a great love for dogs here. There is a row of houses in a street below our apartment in which quite a large number of dogs reside. These particular dogs are of an extraordinarily tireless breed and appear to be capable of barking continuously without any need for sleeping or eating. They carry on a loud and lively conversation on a more or less constant basis. Thankfully, they are far enough away that their voices blend somewhat with the more soothing rumble and hum of the city and one can almost not notice them after a while.

Life, as I have said to a few people lately, is life wherever one goes. People are people and it doesn't really matter in what city or country or on what continent or in what language. We eat and sleep, have work and relationships and struggles and in the end it doesn't really matter a great deal where we are doing it. However, there are different rhythms to different places, and while the instruments may be mostly the same, the music can still be somewhat different.

A few impressions so far:

People work harder here, I think. The standard work day is nine to six rather than nine to five and staying late at the office after work is quite common. This translates into a need to push other activities later into the evening and so dinner is usually at 8 or 9 rather than 6 or 7, or sometimes 5, like in Canada. Parties and gatherings often go late into the night and then later into the early morning hours. People seem to be able to do this and then still get up and go to work in the morning. However, naps are a bit more common when there is an opportunity.

There is a more stark line between those who have and those who don't and poverty is more evident. Despite this, Chile is a very developed and orderly sort of country.

I've been a bit frustrated with grocery shopping. They don't have the idea of buying things in large quantities here and so you have to buy 1 kg of flower, or 100 gm of quinoa. Everything comes in small sizes, and I find myself craving a trip to Costco. I'm a bit ashamed of this...  :-)

People, though, are friendly and kind. My few forays into the world without Grace present to translate and communicate have met with enthusiastic support despite my lack of language ability, and some fun conversations in Spanglish with taxi drivers and store clerks.

There are fences everywhere, often topped with sharp objects or pointed posts or razor wire and this gives the impression that it's not completely safe. However, I have not ever felt threatened or worried, in any of the places I have visited in Chile, and I have found the people to always be honest, helpful and kind.

Places and events

Our first dinner at home, after I arrived. Married life begins (for real, now that we actually are living together)  :-)

a beautiful present from Grace - a hand made woolen poncho, made by a Mapuche woman that Grace knows:

Grace's son and daughter, Andres and Francisca, were here for a four day weekend these past four days. While they were here we did a day trip up the coast to the north, driving from Concepcion to Cobquecura. The trip is about an hour and a half, generally, but we arrived at Quirihue just as a big bike race was starting. It was fun to see several hundred racers zoom by, but also a bit slow having to follow them all the way to Cobquecura. We therefore decided to take a "shortcut" and took a back road instead.

Grace and I are quite fond of shortcuts actually. We take them quite often and always find that they take longer than intended, are rougher and muddier than intended and are also much more interesting and at times beautiful than expected. This was the case again and so we had quite an interesting journey along the edge of the Itata river and then the ocean, on a narrow and winding road with only an occasional vehicle appearing around a blind corner and keeping the driving interesting.

Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures. Here are two though, of one of our stopping points along the way:

and the restaurant - La Esquina - in Cobquecura. Good food!

The fish is merluza, a very tasty fish somewhat like cod but less grainy and better tasting:

Papas salteadas - fried potatoes, but better. An interesting note is that one of the many disputes about origins of things between Peru and Chile is the dispute about the origin of the potato. Chile says that potatoes originated in Chile, on the island of Chiloe. Peru says that potatoes came originally from Peru.  Another dispute is about the origin of the rather delicious drink - the pisco sour, and more importantly pisco in general. Pisco is a very strong distilled alcohol made from grapes.

We also visited, on another day, Talcahuano and the village of Tumbes. It is a small fishing village about half an hour from where we live.

Talcahuano is the home of a ship called the Huascar which is the result of a somewhat more serious dispute between Peru and Chile in 1870. It is a steam ship, purchased from England by Peru and eventually captured by Chile in a series of heroic battles still talked about. We were unfortunately not able to visit it, however, as we forgot our ID and it is in a navy facility that doesn't have a sense of flexibility about procedures.

The Huascar

Talcahuano, waterside

Sidewalk sales

waterfront

 and Tumbes.  Dry dock...

Lots of seafood

Piures and machas.

and boats from which to catch it

This pelican seemed very happy with its perch in the boat:

This one doesn't float very well:

And lunch in the famous "a la pobre" (of the poor) style, which means you get french fries and a fried egg (or two) with it. Portions are usually pretty big. The fish here is reineta, another of the locally caught species. It tends to fall apart more easily than merluza and so is generally cooked in a batter. Grace and I generally by one plate and share it and are quite happily full. The picture also shows a mostly gone, but very tasty, pisco sour.

and finally, not to leave out the cultural experience, we were able to meet with Sergio Jarlaz. He was the winner of the Chilean "X factor" - a Chilean singing competition program, in 2011, and he was also a student of Grace's mother for quite a few years. He will be singing in an opera (Lucia de Lammermoor) in Concepcion at the end of the month and has invited us, along with Grace's mother to attend. He's a very nice person. :-)

So, though quite a lot more has happened and there could be more to say, I will end with this for now. Until the next time - love from down here in the southern hemisphere...  :-)